Given the political climates of various locations around the world, soldiers, marines, law enforcement and other personnel from various security agencies are constantly faced with situations where they are confronted with suspect individuals. In certain situations, it may be desirable to set a perimeter around a location for security personnel to identify if a human is within a certain distance of a defined area. Unfortunately, in order to determine whether such suspect individuals are present using conventional search techniques, it has been necessary to use personnel to stand watch. Such personnel may come into close proximity of terrorists and criminals, which can be extremely undesirable and pose a great risk to these personnel.
New technology related to covert detection of humans from a distance is desirable. But the technology itself should be covert, so that the humans being detected do not know that they are being detected. To do this, it may be desirable to use a detection that is completely passive, i.e., that does not emit any electromagnetic energy and look for scattered return energy or pulses, or any other signal such as laser, infrared or the like. Also, the new technology should not have any moving parts, so that the person being detected does not know that he/she is under surveillance.
In view of the above, one object of the present invention is to provide systems and methods for remote detection of human-generated electric fields that are able to detect the presence of human beings at a distance. Another object of the present invention is to provide systems and methods for remote detection of human-generated electric fields that minimize false alarm rates by using detection frequencies that are unique to humans versus other living creatures and by employing a time domain approach to process those frequencies. Still another object of the present invention is to provide systems and methods for remote detection of human-generated electric fields that use the unique electric field of the human body to detect a human subject in a noise-laden area with many other moving objects other than humans. Another object of the present invention is to provide systems and methods for remote detection of human-generated electric fields that do not have moving parts. Yet another object of the present invention is to provide systems and methods for remote detection of human-generated electric fields that can passively detect low-frequency alternating current (AC) fields that correspond to bodily functions. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.